Naturally I was amused by the convenient paralleclass="underline" the “good fishing” that the Deep Ones brought to Innsmouth in exchange for bloody oblations. I had to chuckle at this very real town’s own abundance of local fish. I nearly laughed aloud!
Something that I suspect as being subconscious caused my errant page-flipping to stop, and next my eyes were locked down strangely on another line of Zadok Allen’s drunken ramble: “Obed Marsh he had three ships afloat—brigantine Columby, brig Hetty, an’ bark Sumatry Queen…”
A vertigo accosted me as I stared at the words. Then: Of course! I knew I’d seen those names before! They were right here all along… , for now I recalled these same names from the decorative ship plaques in the restaurant.
So not only did the town of “Innsmouth” exist, though under its true and none-too-different name Innswich, but so did these trading vessels exist somewhere in the town’s dim past. I couldn’t help but admire the assiduousness of Lovecraft’s research efforts—something he was quite known for—to plumb such minute details of reality and infuse them into his fictional landscape.
I re-read parts of several more scenes, all with much chilling delight, then put the book up with the heated anticipation of re-reading cover to cover tomorrow. But there was one more even greater anticipation regarding tomorrow…
I must make every effort to look my best, I realized, then shuddered when I opened my suitcase and found my best suit in a crumpled state. There’d be no place open this hour to get them freshly pressed; hence, I could only hope…
When I glanced into the closet, I saw I was in luck! There, leaning, stood a collapsible pressing board, and atop the high shelf sat a steam-iron. I knew next to nothing of such procedures, but how difficult could it be? I took out the pressing board, looking for some sort of locking pin in order to extend its legs, when—
“Drat!”
—it slipped from my fingers and banged against the back wall of the closet.
“Oh, for pity’s sake!” I complained aloud when I saw that the meager board had struck the wall with such impact that it actually left a hole. The management will be none-too-pleased over this, I thought. Until I pay them double the repair fee. I stepped inside to retrieve the board, then lowered to a knee to inspect the damage. Bits of plaster lay about, while the insult to the plaster-board looked a foot long and several inches wide. This was flimsy construction to say the least, yet of the bungling accident I could only blame my own carelessness.
Before I could pull away, though—
When I put my eye to the rent, the tiniest thread of light seemed to hang in the darkness beyond the plasterboard. Quick calculation told me there must be a small hole in the sidewall, which could only be the wall to my bathroom. When I hastily got up and went to the bathroom I saw that I’d inadvertently left the light on earlier.
A hole, came the plodding thought. In the wall…
A peephole?
The notion seemed absurd but I could not forget my earlier impression: when I’d been bathing, I not only could’ve sworn I heard a human gust of breath from behind the wall, but I’d also been filled with the suspicion that I was being spied on…
No true logic could explain my next endeavor. Careful as ever—while back in the closet—I pulled chunks of the plasterboard away. The damage was already done, so damaging the wall further mattered little; I’d be paying for it regardless of the size of the hole. I suppose my motives at this earlier point were subconscious, but after I pulled away several more pieces of the wall, and shined into the hole the beam of my pocket-flashlight, I detected an area of space beyond that could easily be taken for a narrow walkway. Of course, it must be only a service passage, for access to pipes, electrical wires, and what not. Still…
I pulled away some more pieces until the hole was sizable enough to admit me, and then I crawled in.
Back on my feet, inside now, I approached the threadlike beam. Instinct, of course, put my eye to it posthaste.
I was looking directly into my bathroom.
It IS a peephole, came my first thought but then, No, that’s ridiculous! The Hilman was obviously a respectable lodging-house. The hole could be explained by a number of circumstances: a simple construction flaw, or a nail-hole where a picture had been hung.
Deeper in the murk, though, I noticed another thread of light.
Taking every precaution not to misstep, I proceeded to this next light-beam and found, to my dismay, another hole, which looked directly into the bedroom of the suite next to mine.
I was at a loss for what to think just yet. A modest clatter came to my ears and, with my eye pressed to the hole, I noticed movement.
It was the maid I’d just spoken too, who’d only just this morning been pregnant. Solemn faced and dull-eyed she lethargically went about the task of making the bed and picking up. On a chair by the door, however, I noticed a small valise, which sat opened and showed that it was full of clothes. And on the dresser?
There sat a neat, beige Koko-Kooler hat, identical to that which William Garret had been wearing just this morn when I met him. Near the door, too, sat a briefcase that appeared all-too-similar to his.
But Garrett and his friend already checked out, I remembered.
Once the housekeeper had finished with the bed, she jammed the hat into the suitcase, close dit, then took it and the briefcase out of the room…
Only the baldest, most objective pondering occupied my mind now. I believed there were two more rooms on this side of the floor, and when I peered down—sure enough—I spotted two more of the tiny beams of light, signaling the existence of two more peepholes. Then, in the opposite direction of this hidden walkway, several more such beams could be discerned…
I kept my pocket-flash aimed down, on the floor. If this walkway did indeed exist for some ill intent—either for perversity, or remotely gaining knowledge of a lodger’s potential valuables—there must be some mode of unobservable access. At the very end of the passage, on the floor, lay what could only be a trapdoor.
I opened it, spotted a rail-ladder, and without much conscious volition, found myself next taking the ladder down to the hotel’s third floor…
Black as hackneyed pitch, this climbing-way was; I thought of the esophagus of some Mesozoic creature into whose belly I was venturing. A doorless aperture signaled the hidden passage paralleling the third floor, and it was through that I stepped to face a similarly dark hidden passage. A thread of light marked each of the floor’s rooms but when I quickly looked into them, I noted only untenanted hotel rooms.
So—to the next floor I descended upon the ladder. The second floor. At the aperture I stepped into another hallway clogged with darkness made incomplete only by more intermittent threads of light. Here, though, I vaguely detected voices.
I let my shoes take me as slowly—and quietly—as possible to the first of the peeping-holes.
My vantage point only allowed me to view a wedge of the bland, clean room within, where I saw shelves of canned goods, sponges, buckets, towels, and other such items. The voices were distinctly female and seemed nonchalant. Several young women sat in the room, while I could only see slices of them; they appeared to be sitting on several couches. All were in some stage of pregnancy.
“—from Providence, I think, and he’s quite handsome,” one said.